Latest bank results news

Banca Carige’s planned tier two bond, which tides it over until it can raise equity, will present the FIG market with some unusual features. But the unfamiliar intervention from a branch of Italy’s deposit guarantee scheme appears not to have roused the European Commission’s attention with regard to state aid rules.

Banca Carige announced its capital recovery plan on Monday, relying on friends and family to help it keep going. Italian banks have agreed to support it with €320m though the interbank deposit protection fund (FITD), and it will also be looking to existing shareholders.

Credit Suisse made a bold claim in its third quarter numbers — to topping the table for improvement in advisory and capital markets since it started its restructuring in 2015. But despite the investment banking momentum, the bank’s shares slid on Thursday as it reported a loss in its global markets business.

Barclays’ breakneck pace of investment into its trading businesses has borne some fruit in the third quarter of this year, with a 19% increase in markets income to £1.16bn. But banking was softer, and the results do not yet allow the firm to dismiss demands from Edward Bramson, the activist investor, to shrink the investment bank.

The large British banks have just completed one of the most complex structural reforms they’ve ever undertaken, severing their UK retail businesses from their wholesale operations to meet ringfence regulations. The sheer disruption of the changes has led competitors to scent blood, while the UK banks have been anxious to reassure their clients that nothing will change.

UniCredit’s senior management team had to fend off a barrage of questions about the bank’s exposure to Turkish bank Yapi Kredi this week, as yields spiked on Turkish local currency debt and the lira slid further against the dollar. UniCredit’s equity stake is accounted at €2.5bn, but worth less than €1.2bn in today’s market.

Also in People & Markets

From June 2019 a large chunk of debt borrowed by banks from the EU periphery under the European Central Bank’s second Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO II) will no longer be considered stable funding. Banks should refinance that debt in the market instead of hoping for another ECB handout.